The present invention relates to an adaptive information processing system; that is, the invention concerns a self-organizing apparatus or process for "mapping" an input signal into an output response, which output response may vary over time, notwithstanding the presence of the same input signal, as the system "learns" or is "trained".
Our U.S. Pat. No. 3,950,733 issued Apr. 13, 1976 discloses an information processing system of the above-mentioned type. This system includes a module, called the Nestor.sup.TM adaptive module, which operates to map an input signal into an output response in accordance with a particular algorithm. When operated in a so-called "learning mode", the Nestor adaptive module modifies itself to both "learn" and "forget" at desired rates. When operated in a so-called "memory mode", the module neither learns nor forgets but functions as a pure distributed memory.
Our U.S. Pat. No. 3,950,733 discloses an analog circuit as a specific representative embodiment of the Nestor adaptive module. While an analog circuit of this type constitutes a simple and straightforward practical realization of the Nestor adaptive module, it may not be readily brought into production using currently known techniques for the manufacture of large-scale integrated circuits (LSI's). These techniques of circuit design and manufacture, which permit reductions in circuit size and power consumption, have been developed for digital logic storage functions and may not be readily adaptable to the production of analog circuits.